Things Best Left Unread
by Marlex
Summary: Tony is acting a bit odd and Tim wants to know why. Unfortunately for both of them, the answer is Tony discovered Deep Six fanfiction.


**Author's Note:** I had fun with one. I wrote it for the Comment Fic community on LiveJournal. The prompt this time was: reading or writing fanfiction. I do want to point that this fic is intended to fun and humorous and not to bash any particular pairings. I hope you enjoy. (Addendum: I made some edits to this story, fixing a couple of typos and changing two lines of dialogue.)

Things Best Left Unread

Timothy McGee stepped off the elevator and entered the bullpen, noticing Tony had not yet arrived to work. Ziva was already at her desk, however, busy reading her e-mail or whatever else she did first thing in the morning.

McGee was finishing his own e-mail check when Tony showed up, looking pretty worse for wear, as if he hadn't had much sleep. Frankly, Tim didn't want to know what had kept the senior agent up most of the night, so he simply said, "Good morning Tony," and went back to his computer.

There was no witty banter following Tim's greeting as Tony plopped into his chair, which surprised him. Tim turned back to Tony, about to ask him what was wrong, but he gave him an odd look that killed the question before he had a chance to open his mouth. Gibbs arrived a few seconds later and Tim did his best to look busy, Tony's behavior quickly forgotten.

Two hours later, however, Tim was nearly fed up with Tony, who had continued to give him strange looks off and on throughout the morning, appearing as if he desperately wanted to ask Tim a question but couldn't build up the nerve.

It was only after Gibbs and Ziva left the bullpen to discuss with Abby one last evidence report to finalize the paperwork for their latest closed case, that Tim decided he couldn't take it anymore.

"What?" Tim nearly yelled.

Tony jumped, pretending to do something on his computer. "Huh?"

"You've been giving me looks all morning. What is your problem?"

Tony looked almost chagrined at being caught. After a few silent moments, he asked quietly, "Have you ever heard of fanfiction?"

Of all the questions he'd expected from Tony, this had to be near the very bottom of the list, right next to "Can you give me relationship advice?" It took him a bit to regain his bearings, but then a sinking feeling took him. Oh no, he didn't. He couldn't have. Tim gave Tony another glance and he knew he had.

_Oh crap._

"Tell me you didn't spend half the night reading Deep Six fanfiction," he said at last.

By Tony's expression, he knew he'd nailed it.

_Oh crap._

"I was just curious what people thought of Tommy, since you did base him entirely on me," Tony said defensively. "Then I saw a link for a website and there were all these stories people had written. Isn't that against copyright protection?"

"Most authors don't care," Tim explained. "It's a way to let the fans express their own imaginations. A few people have put their foot down about it, but it usually ends up hurting their reputation with their fans."

"It's still weird," Tony said. "It's one thing to have you writing about us. It's another for complete strangers to do it."

"But they don't know that the characters are based on you guys," Tim said. "Frankly, I never thought the Deep Six books would ever be popular enough to have people write fanfiction for them. It's actually kind of flattering."

"Flattering?" Tony sounded surprised. "Have you actually read this stuff? They have me...I mean Tommy sleeping with everybody. He and Lisa are together in the books, so I can understand that. But me and you? Me and Gibbs? There's a ton of those. A ton! Even Abby! She's like my sister."

Tim had read quite a few of the stories posted online himself, if only out of curiosity. McGregor had played the rounds in a lot of them as well. He knew from experience - he thought briefly of the rather large collection of X-Files fanfiction still sitting in a protected folder on his home computer - that whatever the fandom, pretty much every character would get paired with everyone else sooner or later. He did have to admit that it was a bit odd reading it when he'd based the Deep Six characters so closely on his friends. He'd been especially not happy seeing stories about Amy with anyone other than McGregor, but that was a discussion he was not going to have with Tony.

"Look on the bright side, Tibbs is the only one who has more stories written about him than Tommy," Tim said, trying to pacify his friend. "That shows he's a popular character that people care about."

Tony look thoughtful and then gave a slight nod. "That's true." The thoughtful expression returned as he added, "But did they have to pair Tommy with everybody? I think the only one I didn't see was one with Jimmy."

Tim thought for a moment whether or not tell him, but Tony must have seen the look on his face.

"What?" he asked suspiciously.

"Well, I did see this one story where the two of your were...well...together, sort of."

"But didn't you make him a necrophiliac in the books?"

"Yeah…you...I mean Tommy…was killed on assignment...and...well…Pimmy...he did the autopsy. And well…"

"Just stop," Tony said, cutting him off. "No more explanation. Please."

"Stopping now," Tim offered with a nod.

"Thank you."

Tim thought the conversation was done and he was about to turn back to his computer when Tony spoke up again.

"I do have say, some of those writers are pretty talented," he said. "A few of those stories about Tommy and Lisa were-"

"No!" Tim said. "You stop. This conversations ends now. I don't want to ever hear the word fanfiction come out your mouth again."

"What is fanfiction?" Ziva's voice asked from behind him.

_Oh shit._


End file.
